Eight years after the September 11th attacks, Afghanistan remains mired in violence and war. (Check out this 2008 episode of Common Sense to see what we mean.) Last summer, with the country plunging further into chaos, President Obama decided to raise troop levels by 30,000, hoping to pull back out in a couple years
Whether this new strategy will succeed, only time will tell. But in the past week there seems to have been some payoff. The Taliban's deputy leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was captured in Karachi, with the help of Pakistani intelligence. The capture came right as coalition forces were staging an attack in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand.

A few months back we checked in with our regular columnist Bob Shepherd, ex-SAS officer and author of the best-selling The Circuit, to get his thoughts on Obama's troop increase. Now Shepherd weighs in on where the Taliban stands after the latest blows.